Israel refuses security for Carter

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Israel has refused to provide security for Jimmy Carter after declaring his intention to meet with Hamas. In fact, Carter will get no cooperation at all from the Shin Bet in his travels through Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank. I can’t imagine how Carter’s Secret Service detail must be feeling right now knowing they won’t have the backing of Israeli security and intelligence. I bet they’re real happy with Carter.

Israel’s secret service has declined to assist U.S. agents guarding former U.S. President Jimmy Carter during a visit in which Israeli leaders have shunned him, U.S. sources close to the matter said on Monday.

Carter angered the Israeli government with plans to meet Hamas’s top leader, Khaled Meshaal, in Syria, and for describing Israeli policy in the occupied Palestinian territories as “a system of apartheid” in a 2006 book.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who brokered Israel’s first peace treaty with an Arab neighbor, Egypt, signed in 1979, met Israel’s largely ceremonial president, Shimon Peres, on Sunday but was shunned by the political leadership, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Israel has also rejected Carter’s request to meet jailed Palestinian uprising leader Marwan Barghouthi, who is seen as a possible successor to President Mahmoud Abbas, a spokesman for Carter said.